City Doubles Contract for Outside Legal Services

Faced with legal issues that the City Attorney’s Office cannot handle alone, Rockville will pay $1 million to contract out legal services.

The Rockville City Council’s unanimous vote on Monday, first reported in The Gazette, doubles the amount of a contract between of Rockville and the city that the previous council approved last fall.

The council voted Sept. 19 to increase Venable’s contract with the city for fiscal 2011 by nearly $355,000. At that same meeting, the council voted to award Venable a $500,000 contract for fiscal 2012, which began July 1.

Issues that arose in the last half of fiscal 2011, including work related to to Federal Realty Investment Trust, necessitated the increase, according to the Jan. 30 report by city staff.

Finalizing agreements related to also require “ongoing legal services,” the report said.

On Monday, Councilwoman Bridget Donnell Newton, who supported the council's decision several years ago to create of an in-house city attorney as a cost-saving measure, asked for an accounting of the city’s legal expenses for fiscal 2010 and fiscal 2011.

At the Sept. 19 meeting, Newton asked why the city needed to increase the contract for outside legal services and asked if the city’s in-house attorneys would be able to handle the workload in the future.

“There is a certain amount that’s budgeted out of my office to begin with because there is an acknowledgement there are certain specialized areas that my office could not handle just with the three attorneys that I have at the moment,” Daniel said.

With the exception of employee benefits, the office’s budget, which is $947,740, has not increased in recent years, she said.

The Gazette detailed the work done by the office, as well as the city's long relationship wiht Venable.

Legal work performed by Venable since the start of fiscal 2011 has tapped funding sources outside of the City Attorney’s Office, including the city’s pension plan and the budget for the Town Square garages, Daniel said Sept. 19.

Venable also handles bond sales, including Legal fees for bond work are paid from proceeds from the bond sales, .

The City Attorney’s Office can handle “normal every day things or things that we take care of every year, year in and year out,” Daniel said.